Israel’s goals in its current war with Hamas may be too far-reaching to achieve.
- One Ground offensive would be for the Israeli government with many Risks tied together
- For Israel has the Hostage rescue priority
- High-ranking ones Hamas leader sit among other things to Qatar away
- This article is available for the first time in German – the magazine first published it on October 10, 2023 Foreign policy.
Gaza – “I can only compare their attack to ISIS,” Haim Regev, Israel’s ambassador to the European Union and NATO, told reporters Foreign policy in his office in Brussels. He was referring to the hundreds of dead and dozens of abducted people, including women, children and the elderly, when armed Palestinian fighters entered southern Israel early Saturday morning. In the course of War in Israel the world must put pressure on them Hamas exercise to release the Israeli hostages unconditionally, said Regev.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, vowed to unleash anger. He called up 300,000 reservists and hinted at an impending ground attack. Netanyahu called on Gazans in Hamas-held areas to leave while Israeli forces gathered at the de facto Gaza border to prepare. According to fiery statements from Israeli officials, their supposed mission is to to behead Hamas and to finally end the threat it poses to Israel.
Hamas will use Israeli hostages as leverage
But it’s less clear what that might mean in practice. Is Israel able to eliminate Hamas? Would it be enough to force the Hamas leadership to leave Gaza? Would they have to be killed? Or will Hamas inevitably become an integral part of Palestinian politics as long as there is no lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Although Netanyahu may not admit it, he probably realizes that Hamas has a lifeline in the form of its Israeli hostages. As long as Israeli citizens are in the hands of Hamas, Netanyahu will be under pressure to negotiate their release. In 2011, the Israeli government released more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was captured by Palestinian militants who had entered Israel through a tunnel.
In an interview with AlJazeera A senior Hamas leader said the group had captured enough Israelis to demand the release of all Palestinians in Israeli prisons. “What we have in our hands will free all of our prisoners,” said Saleh al-Arouri, deputy head of Hamas’ political office. AlJazeera reported that more than 5,000 Palestinians are in Israeli prisons. According to Addameer, a non-governmental organization for prisoners’ rights, these include 33 women and 170 minors.
Freeing prisoners is a priority for Israel’s government
According to a report first published by China’s state news agency Xinhua Qatar brokered an agreement between Israel and Hamas that would provide for the release of female Israeli hostages in exchange for female Palestinian prisoners. “With US support, Qatar is trying to reach an urgent agreement,” an anonymous source told Xinhua. However, there is currently no official statement on such an agreement. So far, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has increased Israel’s leverage by arresting a senior Hamas leader, Muhammad Abu Ghali, the deputy commander of the southern division of the Hamas naval unit. Blocking Gaza’s supply of food, fuel and electricity also puts pressure on the Hamas leadership.
Rescuing the Israeli hostages is Israel’s priority, but that is just one of the many reasons holding Israel back from a final ground offensive, which it has long been considering and which it has decided against. The Israeli security apparatus has long been convinced that the Hamas beheading requires far more than a one-off, short-term military operation, and a broader campaign poses a variety of challenges for the Israeli authorities. It was no coincidence that Israel unilaterally decided to evacuate the Gaza Strip in 2005, decades after occupying the territory in 1967.
Nevertheless, there is great pressure in Israel not only to retaliate against Hamas, but also to achieve a significant, strategic victory. “Our civilians have been slaughtered,” said retired colonel. D. Eran Lerman, a former deputy national security adviser to Israel, opposite Foreign policy. “We cannot live under this devastating threat.”
Two years ago, at an earlier clash between the IDF and Hamas, Lerman argued for a more cautious response. “Hamas’ capabilities must be destroyed, but not to zero – that was our idea,” Lerman said at the time. “Iran and Hezbollah are the greater threat and we must remain focused on them.
A “murderous attack” on the Israeli people
Even relatively liberal and peace-loving Israelis have changed their perspective after the recent Hamas attack. The scale and brutality of the attack has shocked Israel and united the diverse and fractious political landscape, with many now seeking a lasting solution to Hamas. For many, this means completely removing the group from its refuge in Gaza. Lerman said Israel could no longer allow Hamas to operate in the Gaza Strip, not after its recent “murderous attack” on the Israeli population. Ambassador Regev said Israel “cannot tolerate” such attacks.
However, a ground offensive aimed at permanently weakening Hamas requires not only entering but also staying behind and reoccupying the strip. So Israel faces a dilemma. Without ground troops, Hamas cannot stop it, but being there means not only that the country will have to spend huge amounts of money to take responsibility for the Palestinians after the conflict, but also that both sides will inevitably lose many lives will have to complain.
Ground offensive: Is the Israeli leadership afraid of the humanitarian costs?
As in the past, Israel can bomb buildings and infrastructure in Gaza used by Hamas, such as its underground tunnel network. However, recent developments have shown that such measures are not enough to stop Hamas from countering Israel with terrorism. Around skills to find and destroy those who are not in sight, and to decimate the leadership, the IDF would have to enter the Gaza Strip – supported by intelligence and air power – and comb every neighborhood, every single house in the hotly contested territory. The humanitarian cost of such an undertaking alone could be enough to deter Israel.
Furthermore, the sympathy that Israel has gained this week – even though it is often seen as an aggressor in the conflict, unwilling to make concessions and find peace – could soon fade if Gaza’s unarmed residents have nowhere to go and dying in droves from Israeli bombings. An armed conflict in a Palestinian territory that threatens the lives of its 2 million residents could also lead to an even broader conflict with Iran or its proxy, Hezbollah, which has already heeded Hamas’s call and some this week launched attacks on Israel. It could even inflame passions on the sleeping Arab street and force Israel’s new friends in the Islamic world to side with Muslims and against Israel.
There were demonstrations in Bahrain, Morocco, Turkey, Yemen, Tunisia and Kuwait. Two Israeli tourists were killed in Egypt. Abdul Majeed Abdullah Hassan, who took part in a rally with hundreds of people in Bahrain, said New York Times: “This is the first time we are happy for our Palestinian brothers in this way.” Against the backdrop of the Israeli occupation and blockade, the Hamas operation “warmed our hearts”he said, calling his government’s involvement in the Abraham Accords “shameful.”
Israel would have to permanently occupy the Gaza Strip
A limited ground invasion could be a way out. The Israelis could quickly intervene and destroy current stockpiles and factories that build large to medium-sized missiles. However, to ensure that Hamas no longer produces weapons in the future, the IDF would have to remain in Gaza. Hamas has proven time and time again that it can customize and build rockets in local workshops using everyday products. For example, it assembles crude but effective Qassam rockets using industrial metal tubing and home-made fuel from potassium nitrate fertilizer and commercial explosives.
None of this should come as a surprise. It has always been the case that Israel cannot effectively contain the Hamas threat unless the IDF is permanently stationed in Gaza. In 2021, when I was researching Hamas’s capabilities, Michael Armstrong, an associate professor of operations research at Brock University in Canada who has written about the operational capability of Hamas-built weapons, told me that he couldn’t really see , how Hamas should be disarmed if the Israelis do not want to stay in the Gaza Strip and occupy it.
Additionally, targeting Hamas members inside the Gaza Strip, where many people might be supporting the group right now, requires extremely good intelligence information that is probably not as readily available as Mossad folklore would have you believe.
Senior Hamas leaders have already fled
In a conversation with Foreign policy Regev downplayed Israel’s intentions toward Hamas, describing them only as “destroying its capabilities” rather than occupying the Gaza Strip.
At the same time, one can assume that Israel is not bluffing this time. Even if the hostages are released in an exchange, the Hamas leadership faces a threat like never before. Some of its leaders are already in Lebanon and Qatar, while the group has also operated from Turkey in the past. Given the increasing As a result of the Israeli counteroffensive, even more of its members could now be planning to escape.
About the author
Anchal Vohra is a Brussels-based columnist at Foreign Policy who writes about Europe, the Middle East and South Asia. She has reported on the Middle East for the Times of London and worked as a television correspondent for Al Jazeera English and Deutsche Welle. Previously based in Beirut and Delhi, she has reported on conflict and politics from over two dozen countries. Twitter (X): @anchalvohra
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on October 10, 2023 in the magazine “ForeignPolicy.com“ was published – as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.
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